Anton Gazenbeek

Early life

Gazenbeek was born Anton Peter Cristiaan Gazenbeek in Los Altos, California on January 5, 1984. His mother, Ann (nee Freeman), who is of English and German ancestry, was a homemaker. His father, Jan Anton Gazenbeek, came from an aristocratic Dutch background and moved to the United States in the 1960s. His paternal grandfather, Anton Jan Gazenbeek, was one of the most renowned figures in Dutch aristocracy of the early to mid- 20th Century.

At the age of 11 Gazenbeek fell in love with tango music and started a decade-long immersive study of the dance being trained in Buenos Aires by the very pioneers who had created the dance. He studied at the San Francisco Academy of Ballet under famed ballet masters Richard Gibson, Zory Karah, Ken Delmar and Elizabeth Gravelle. At age of 16 he made his professional debut at Harvard University with the great dancer Guillermina Quiroga for the world premier of Luis Bacalov's "Misa Tango". This opened the door to many high profile performances in the coming years which included performances in Europe, Asia, and North and South America.

Gazenbeek's roots are in the milonga (social tango dances). As a young boy, he attended milongas five, six, sometimes seven nights a week and studied ballet during the day. He is a very rare case in the dance world in that his dance style combines a very classical aesthetic and line with authentic milonguero roots.

Dance career

In 2003 Gazenbeek moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina to carry out research for a series of books and documentaries he was writing. During his early time there, he was discovered by Graciela Cabrera, a famed choreographer and began to perform nightly at the many tango show houses in the city, becoming the only foreigner at that time to ever have done so. When the famed dance couple Carlos Copello and Alicia Monti separated after 18 years of partnership, Anton was called in as Carlos' replacement and the couple performed with Horacio Salgan, Alberto Podesta, Ubaldo de Lio and Ariel Ardit as well as conducted numerous tours to China, Japan, Korea and the United States.

Upon the completion of his partnership with Alicia Monti, Gazenbeek formed a dance couple with the young dancer Natalie Laruccia with whom he toured North America and Asia and gave countless performances across Argentina. Performances at Lincoln Center and on television followed including a special presentation at the World Tango Festival which was an unprecedented success.

Gazenbeek has performed at all the major tango show houses and milongas in Buenos Aires as well as on tour in Europe, Asia, and the United States where he frequently performs with world-renowned symphony orchestras. He has partnered with some of the top female tango dancers in the world including Guillermina Quiroga, Johana Copes, Alicia Monti, Susana Rojo, Carolina Jaurena, Carina Losano, and Annatina Luck. In addition to performing with these professional dancers, Anton has performed with Margarita Guille, Ofelia Rosito, and Nina Balbuena all three of whom are referred to as the "royalty of tango" in Buenos Aires. He specializes in the style of Antonio Todaro, is the only surviving proponent of authentic Tango al Reves in the world and a master of all the styles of Argentine Tango from Canyengue and Orillero to the modern styles of today.

Gazenbeek was an unusual case at the time as he was one of the first foreign dancers who was openly accepted by the Argentine dance community. He also belonged to the last generation of professional dancers that went through the old system of hierarchy wherein one had to prove oneself on the dance floors of the traditional Buenos Aires milongas such as Sunderland Club, Sin Rumbo, Almagro and Salon Canning before truly being accepted into the ranks of the respected tangueros.

In 2006, Gazenbeek moved to New York City to pursue a lucrative modeling career. At the same time continuing his dance activities, he founded Strictly Traditional Argentine Tango NYC, a dance school aimed at preserving the traditions of tango and passing them on to future generations.

Anton Gazenbeek currently teaches at Stepping Out Studios in New York.

Author

Writing the first sentences of his first book at 16, Gazenbeek has gone on to write articles on the history of tango, published two books to date and lectured at Stanford University, Harvard University, Juilliard, MIT, St. John's University and Hamburg University in Germany. His book Inside Tango Argentino is the first in a series on the evolution of tango. His second book, A Selection of Writings on Argentine Tango, which covers the life of Antonio Todaro in great depth will be released in Fall 2013. Gazenbeek is currently working on the third and fourth books in a series on the history of tango.

His book The Encyclopedia of Tango Dancers is considered the definitive source on information on Argentine tango dancers worldwide and is regularly consulted by journalists, researchers, authors and dance historians worldwide and highly lauded for its in-depth portrayal of the lives of tango's most important dancers and choreographers.

Gazenbeek is considered the foremost expert on Antonio Todaro today. Having carried out almost two decades of deep research into the life, dance, and work of Maestro Todaro, he has produced a series of teaching DVDs that chronicle the work of this great creator of tango and are the most popular and widely sold instructional tango DVDs in the world.

Video Archive

Gazenbeek is the owner of a film archive which has attained legendary status in the dance world and is in fact the largest historical tango film archive in the world. After almost two decades of traveling the world collecting rare material, the archive now stands at well over 8,500 hours of film footage of Argentine Tango from 1911 to 2015. It is particularly known for containing the only existing images of some of the most important dance pioneers in the history of tango and is constantly sought out as a resource by museum, historians, journalists and authors.

Modeling career

In 2008, while on tour to the United States with a tango show, Gazenbeek was spotted on Fire Island by a modeling scout who encouraged him to pursue modeling. Never having considered it as a career, Gazenbeek dismissed the offer until convinced by his friends to hear the scout out. He went to a meeting with the director of a New York City based modeling agency, a contract was placed on the table, signed and Gazenbeek embarked on a major modeling career which included campaigns for Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Gucci, Calvin Klein, Cartier, AX - Armani Exchange, Abercrombie & Fitch, Andrew Christian Swimwear, and appearances in magazines Men's Vogue, Vogue Italia, VMAN, Numero Homme, Harper's Bazaar, Financial Times, How To Spend It Magazine, MetroSource, Next, among others. He is particularly known in the fashion industry for his extreme muscular definition, balanced physical proportions and ability to pass off as numerous nationalities in advertisement campaigns.